Animal Ecology and Environmental Change

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Animal Ecology and Environmental Change

The environment is changing faster than at any time in recorded history, due to a range of factors including climate change, habitat loss, renewable energy developments, pollution and over-exploitation of natural resources. These changes are having profound effects on biodiversity and human and animal health - and we need to be able to predict the consequences.

Our Institute integrates studies of the effects of environmental change operating at all levels of biological organisation. For instance, at the cellular level we are investigating how environmental conditions influence physiological and molecular processes including metabolism, oxidative damage and the rate of ageing. This is linked to studies of how individual animals and plants cope with environmental fluctuations, and how in turn this influences population dynamics, species interactions (including those between parasites and hosts) and community structure. We conduct both short-term experiments and long-term monitoring of wild populations (at a range of field sites including loch and woodland research programmes at our field station).

There are many links to other research in the Institute (e.g. through the effect of environmental conditions on disease transmission or food production, or through investigation of how animals evolve in the face of changing environments), and elsewhere in the University (e.g. links with geographers, statisticians and mathematicians in the College of Science and Engineering).

Full listing of staff in this research theme

Research interests: Fresh water ecosystems and particularly on behavioural ecology of fish; Development of a sustained aquaculture for Arctic Charr; Behavioural approaches to improved production and welfare of farmed Salmon; The effects of noise on fish distribution

Research Associate (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine)

Research interests: Links between energy metabolism, behaviour and life history strategies across different ecological contexts; resource allocation trade-offs; long-term effects of early environments on adult performance; phenotypic plasticity and flexibility in variable environments.

Research interests: Evolutionary processes within rare fish populations and the development of conservation strategies for rare and endangered fish species (including conservation genetics); control of invasive non-native species and the impact of freshwater and marine renewable technologies on fish

Research interests: How exposure to chemicals in the environment, at different life stages, can affect reproductive function; how maternal smoking affects the human fetus, including programming of adverse health outcomes in adulthood

Research interests: The regulation of the neuroendocrine axes, in particular those regulating reproductive function, both by internal factors such as gonadal steroids and stress hormones and external factors such as chemical mixtures that are found in the environment.

Research interests: Combining laboratory, field and theoretical studies to identify the evolutionary and ecological factors that stabilize parasite life cycles; and applying this knowledge to highlight weak points in transmission that could be exploited by new and/or existing control strategies.

Research interests: I am interested in the ecology of infectious diseases, particularly rabies, with the aim understanding infection dynamics across spatial scales and the impacts of control efforts. I use a combination of detailed field investigations, vaccination interventions and modelling.

Research interests: Annual and daily rhythms, especially of wild organisms; physiology, ecology and migration of birds. Understanding how biological clocks help or hinder organisms' adjustment to environmental change.

Research interests: Low stress techniques for sorting fish in Aquaculture Systems. Social Organisation and reproductive strategies in Corkwing Wrasse. Development of a sustained aquaculture for Arctic Charr. Energetic consequences and the costs of fighting in decapod Crustacea.

Research interests: Structure and function of unusual lipid binding proteins of free-living and parasitic nematodes; Allergen proteins; The evolution of viviparity in mammals; The molecular biology and biochemistry of frog nest foams.

Research interests: Physiology and behavioural ecology of marine and freshwater fishes, especially how energetic demand influences life-histories and trade-offs involved with foraging and predator-avoidance behaviours; interactions between individual physiology and group behaviours in fish.

Research interests: Evolutionary ecology, particularly life-history evolution, resource allocation, sexual selection and community ecology, and the application of these frameworks in resistance evolution and evolutionary and comparative medicine in general.

Research interests: Life-history strategies and effects of early conditions on phenotypic development and on deterioration in later life; long and short term resource allocation trade-offs; mainly birds, with related work on other taxa, including fish and amphibia.

Research interests: My research interests focus on how organisms cope with the environment in which they live. The current work centres on marine (seabirds) and oak forest habitats (blue tits) as well as the environment animals encounter in captivity.

Research interests: Reproductive physiology/neuroendocrinology. Understanding the mechanisms by which factors to which the developing fetus is exposed, including steroid hormones, steroid mimetics and stress hormones, programme health and welfare problems in later life.